HOW GOD LOVED US FIRST



Almost everybody claims to love God. Surely the great number of folks associated in some way with religion do. But according to the word of God, the people of God love Him for a particular reason. "We love Him, because He first loved us" [I JOHN 4:19]. Did you hear that? "Because He first loved us!" Yet most of these professing religionists either do not know or deny what the Scriptures tell about God "first" loving His people. God's love for His people is an "everlasting love" exhibiting itself in divine election. That is, the choosing by God of a number which no man can number out of Adam's fallen race to be the recipients of His grace.

He is not obligated to save any. All are sinners and justly deserve His wrath. So the great love His people have for Him is "because He first loved us." He loved us when we did not love Him, loved us who are unlovely, and loved us and gave His Son for us. But oh to remember that He FIRST loved us! "According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him..." [EPHESIANS 1:4]. The Apostle Paul says to all believers in COLOSSIANS 3, "Put on therefore, as the ELECT of God, holy and BELOVED, bowels of mercy..." In Thessalonians, "Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God."

Hear his particular thanksgiving, "But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth." God's love is also first in predestination. "In love having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will" [EPHESIANS 1:5].

God is love determining all things to assure His glory and the salvation of His elect. He "loved us and gave Himself for us." We love God "because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us" [ROMANS 5:5]. Before the world began, before we were born, and while we were yet spiritually dead, God "first loved us." It is because of this that nothing "shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus." Can anybody love God who denies HOW God first loved us?


-Gospel report by preacher Gary Shepard

Sovereign Grace Baptist church of Jacksonville, North Carolina USA

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